Don’t let this get out (the dream of every poet)
by Steve Hellyard Swartz

But I’ve prayed to Jesus

On my knees

that kind of thing

Didn’t know what else to do

Came out of me

like vomit

What’s a Jew to do?

Three in the morning I was never told what to do

In all of my religious education

Maybe I was absent that day

When they told the kids to whom you pray

When your wife has left you and taken your two year old

Daughter away

Maybe they gave out the 800 24 hour number

For secular Jews, but as I say

I wasn’t there

So I’m in Austin, Texas

Alone in a guest house and

It’s about 150 degrees

And I’m going to die I can’t breathe

I’m choking on my daughter’s crooked smile

And the poop she took in the bathtub the last time

I saw her

I’m dying and that’s when I fall to my knees and just

Scream Please God Please

But I saw God earlier that night

And he looked worse than I do right now

Poor bastard on stage at this club

Called Antone’s

God sweating and crying introducing a

Song by telling about finding his wife hanging

In a closet so I think you probably get it now

I can’t call him it’s out of the question

I’m on my knees I’m picked apart

I’m limb from limbed

I scream and the word that comes out

Is Jesus

This doesn’t shock me doesn’t do a thing

It just comes out and the next thing I know

I’m actually talking to him that’s right

I’m having a conversation with Jesus and he

Doesn’t ask if I’ve accepted him or who’s your

Daddy or any shit like that he’s just talking to me

And he’s telling me to get up off my ass and put

On something, anything, it doesn’t matter, but I need

To get out of there and I need to wash my clothes

Jesus guides me then to an all-nite laundramat

Where I sit and watch my clothes tumble

In the laundry I find an old New Yorker magazine

And read about Sri Lanka there’s this like twentyfive

Page story about Sri Lanka and I read it and I cry

Like a fucking baby

I cry for the thousands of deaths

The Tamil Liberation Tigers

The majority Sinhalese

Oh Jesus please!

He doesn’t say a word but I feel his presence in

The tumble of my clothes

I feel his body filling the shirts with arms

Outstretched Jesus is that you? Jesus? There’s three

Other people in the laundry with me and they’re talking

To their clothes too

I hide my face in the New Yorker

If these other people are talking to Jesus in their rinse

Cycles and dryers I don’t want to know about it

I hide my face and I thank him tell him I swear

To Christ that one day I’m going to write a thank

You note to you I’m not going to give a dime to anyone who claims

To represent you but I’m going to write something and this is it

Jesus

This is what it is

It is as it is

I’m doing it today

So thank you Jesus I don’t give a damn

What anybody says

In my book

You’re okay